• Off Topic
  • What feature/app do you use that the majority never talk about?

fid02 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/os/android-overview/#android-permissions

Exodus can be useful when comparing apps that have similar purposes. If an app requires a lot of permissions and has a lot of advertising and analytics this is probably a bad sign. We recommend looking at the individual trackers and reading their descriptions rather than simply counting the total and assuming all items listed are equal.

If an app is mostly a web-based service, the tracking may occur on the server side. Facebook shows "no trackers" but certainly does track users' interests and behavior across the site. Apps may evade detection by not using standard code libraries produced by the advertising industry, though this is unlikely.

    horde I know what Exodus is. And I don't agree with Privacy Guides' assessment of it. I'm leaning more towards GrapheneOS' analysis: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1793051200255848553

    I'm not sure it fits in this thread, but I'll quote the posts by the GrapheneOS account here because I have the impression that some users tend to take Exodus' outputs at face value, without thinking critically about how the service actually comes to the conclusions it does.

    Bear in mind that it's only scanning for specific third party libraries they decided are trackers. The classification of some of these libraries as trackers is often questionable or clearly wrong. The way it displays permissions is very wrong and really not how permissions work.
    As an example of why scanning for specific third party libraries doesn't tell you much:

    https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.facebook.katana/latest/
    https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.facebook.lite/latest/

    The way it displays permissions displays low-level info without grouping them into their runtime toggle groups and showing they're opt-in.

    In addition to not showing them grouped into their permission toggles and showing that the most important ones marked dangerous are opt-in, it doesn't show the ones with special access permission toggles (mostly off by default) or that the battery restriction mode controls a lot.

    It also shows a lot of useless things like QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES for querying info about packages in the same profile. Reason it's useless is because apps can simply declare queries matching all apps and still query them without it. It's the beginning of a future privacy feature.

    The low-level permissions marked dangerous are the ones with standard toggles, which also includes INTERNET (Network) on GrapheneOS. Ones not marked dangerous mostly use a special access toggle (usually off by default), case-by-case requests or both (request install packages).

    Whether or not they're marked dangerous is a low-level thing determining if they get a permission toggle. Some aren't marked dangerous because they are considered more dangerous and have an off-by-default special access toggle or a whole special page like accessibility services.

    I've been using LinkSheet. You set it as your default browser to have more control over links you click in external apps. For example, you can manually choose which browser to open a link in each time or have it remember to open links from a domain in a specific browser. It also has other nifty features like built-in clearURLs, Libaredirect, and others. Settings are stored locally and can be imported/exported.

    This is really useful when trying to compartamentalize web browser activity.

    I also use Red Moon as an offline FOSS alternative to Twilight since I'm super sensitive to blue light. I use it so I can have a 3rd preset filter. During the day, dark mode but no filter. In the early evening, night light turns on. If I decide to use my phone while in bed in my dark room later that night, I use a combination of night light, extra dim, and red moon.

    Red Moon is essentially abandoned by the developer, but it's a very simple app that still works well and probably doesn't require much maintanence anyway. It also doesn't require network access.

    Not open source, at least I don't think, but Weawow as my weather app. Its on the Play Store. I use this instead of a FOSS app like Breezy Weather since Weawow is one of the only free android apps that still supports Dark Sky ever since Apple poached it to integrate it into Apple Weather. The app itself is lightweight, doesn't require any permissions besides Network to run properly, and doesn't require play services either. It also supports manually setting a location instead of requiring location access.
    You can also run it from the browser instead of installing it.
    https://weawow.com/

      6 days later

      User2288 Home screen shortcut for the "internet" setting. Less clicks to turn wifi off and on.

      How do you go about doing this? It always annoys me that I can't separate wifi from internet in the status bar

        • [deleted]

        AverageGuy it is basically adding a Settings widget on home screen and choosing Internet from the menu options. Wifi toggle in the widget is near the top and can be brought up just using one tap on the widget

        a month later

        Not an app per-se, but can we just appriciate Vanadium with PWA's? Holy shit

        • Edited

        Ok, not an app, but a Swiss based service, allowing you to share files up to 50GB. You can password protect access to your file, limit the number of downloads, set an expiration date, etc. Does not require an account:

        https://www.swisstransfer.com/en-us

          AlanZ
          Is SwissTransfer E2EE? I wasn't able to find anything after a quick search to suggest that it is. Even this page doesn't mention encryption (despite the advertised "privacy"). Sounds like its honestly just better to use a Send instance (including your own if public instances don't have large enough file sizes)

            Dumdum Is SwissTransfer E2EE?

            Probably not. But I wouldn't trust it anyways, I always encrypt locally, then you can share the password through another channel.

            • Edited

            Dumdum including your own if public instances don't have large enough file sizes

            Too much work : )

            horde Can't edit the post, but it is useful for anyone and not specifically journalists only:

            https://github.com/anonfaded/FadCam#purpose

            Personal Security: Record footage for personal safety or to capture important moments.
            Research and Documentation: Use for documenting events, research, or activities where recording is necessary.

            5 days later

            horde Thanks for promoting my app! :)
            An update that now FadCam is fully changed with whole new UI and options, full changelog is available at GitHub,

              Everyone probably knows of Izzy -
              His Neo Store is pretty awesome as an fdroid replacement for diff repo's etc (a lot even included, just enable or disable what you want/dont)

              ffshare is my goto for quickly reducing image sizes when you just want to send a photo quickly.

              Cams is a brilliant actively developed rtsp viewer (spare tablet + cams = light weight at a glace monitoring etc)

              Saw Markor above, it is fantastic - Quilpad is my 2nd choice for markdown..

              Vivaldi is a decent cross platform browser - I do have it installed on my phones though Vanadium is the best by far - Vivaldi can be useful though when you want to sync browser sessions to your laptop etc (*nix in my case)

              Bitwarden is nice too - on *nix can try Goldwarden (made by one of the main devs of Bitwarden - he very good at crypto as well)

                intron Everyone probably knows of Izzy -
                His Neo Store

                Do you mean Izzyondroid? Neo Store isn't his. It belongs to machiav3lli.